Lord George Gordon Byron

Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) was as famous in his lifetime for his personality cult as for his poetry. He created the concept of the 'Byronic hero' - a defiant, melancholy young man, brooding on some mysterious, unforgivable event in his past. Byron's influence on European poetry, music, novel, opera, and painting has been immense, although the poet was widely condemned on moral grounds by his contemporaries.

George Gordon, Lord Byron, was the son of Captain John Byron, and Catherine Gordon. He was born with a club-foot and became extreme sensitivity about his lameness. Byron spent his early childhood years in poor surroundings in Aberdeen, where he was educated until he was ten. After he inherited the title and property of his great-uncle in 1798, he went on to Dulwich, Harrow, and Cambridge, where he piled up debts and aroused alarm with bisexual love affairs. Staying at Newstead in 1802, he probably first met his half-sister, Augusta Leigh with whom he was later suspected of having an incestuous relationship.

In 1807 Byron's first collection of poetry, Hours Of Idleness appeared. It received bad reviews. The poet answered his critics with the satire English Bards And Scotch Reviewersin 1808. Next year he took his seat in the House of Lords, and set out on his grand tour, visiting Spain, Malta, Albania, Greece, and the Aegean. Real poetic success came in 1812 when Byron published the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812-1818). He became an adored character of London society; he spoke in the House of Lords effectively on liberal themes, and had a hectic love-affair with Lady Caroline Lamb. Byron's The Corsair (1814), sold 10,000 copies on the first day of publication. He married Anne Isabella Milbanke in 1815, and their daughter Ada was born in the same year. The marriage was unhappy, and they obtained legal separation next year.

When the rumors started to rise of his incest and debts were accumulating, Byron left England in 1816, never to return. He settled in Geneva with Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and Claire Clairmont, who became his mistress. There he wrote the two cantos of Childe Harold and "The Prisoner Of Chillon". At the end of the summer Byron continued his travels, spending two years in Italy. During his years in Italy, Byron wrote Lament Of Tasso, inspired by his visit in Tasso's cell in Rome, Mazeppa and started Don Juan, his satiric masterpiece. While in Ravenna and Pisa, Byron became deeply interested in drama, and wrote among others The Two Foscari, Sardanapalaus, Cain, and the unfinished Heaven And Earth.

After a long creative period, Byron had come to feel that action was more important than poetry. He armed a brig, the Hercules, and sailed to Greece to aid the Greeks, who had risen against their Ottoman overlords. However, before he saw any serious military action, Byron contracted a fever from which he died in Missolonghi on 19 April 1824. Memorial services were held all over the land. Byron's body was returned to England but refused by the deans of both Westminster and St Paul's. Finally Byron's coffin was placed in the family vault at Hucknall Torkard, near Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire.

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Forum Discussions on Lord George Gordon Byron

Recent Forum Posts on Lord George Gordon Byron

Does anyone know of any book, or Web site, or other resource that might have an exact map of Byron's travels in the Bernese Oberland, in Switzerland, in 1816 -- the journey that he described in his "Alpine Journal"?
Perhaps such a map might simply be a part of a larger, more general map of Byron's travels, or perhaps it would be a stand-alone. But I would love to see a map that pinpointed the exact locations (as far as it would be possible to be exact) through which Byron passed on his alpine journey of 1816.
Thank you....

Hi,
There is a short poem, or even just a two-verse epitaph where Byron writes about how a knight has no honor left to earn in his home country, should travel abroad to seek it.
I have read those lines probably five years ago, and I can't, at all, remember where they come from!:willy_nilly:
Can somebody help me out, please!
The thing is, I don't remember the correct phrasing, or I would long have found it. Could it be from Byron's "Cain"?
Thanks a lot,
Rafe...

I recently picked up his collected works from a local bookstore and was wondering where to start or rather where to go. I've read Don Juan, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Beppo. I was wondering what are his best works apart from these ones? Also what does everyone else think of Byron? Sorry in advance if this thread has been made before/this was the wrong place to put the thread....

While I adore literature, my first love is classical music. I am a student of composition and am currently looking at setting some Byron poem's to music. I've set "I Saw Thee Weep" and am currently setting "She Walks In Beauty". Could anyone suggest a third poem? Preferably, it would be from Hebrew Melodies, but doesn't have to be. A good choice is a relatively short poem (20-30 lines) with a fairly even rhythm (which most Byron has, so that's not so much of a problem). I would like it to keep fairly close to the theme of love (again, not hard to find in Byron). Any suggestions?...

I believe that from Byron's own insecurities was born his best poetry - he thrived in the humbling of those he felt threatened by. Byron's rival poets, (who he calls the 'Lakers') wrote in a different style but at points were much more popular than him, and often were much better rewarded - Southey would be the most famous example, as he became poet laureate. What do you think?...

We have to analyze these stanzas of Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage for the final test of English Literature, find the themes which appear here, how do they correspond with the ethics of Romanticism and tell what is the general mood of the extract..... :eek2: I am almost desperate with it.. :brickwall
PLEASE can SOMEONE HELP ME?
It is from Canto IV:
CXXIV.
We wither from our youth, we gasp away -
Sick--sick; unfound the boon, unslaked the thirst,
Though to the last, in verge of our decay,
Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first -
But all too late,--so are we doubly curst.
Love, fame, ambition, avarice--'tis the same -
Each idle, and all ill, and none the worst -
For...

I happened upon this poem, and I found it quite captivating and beautiful. It draws upon elements of which I cannot resist with the allusions to the night and the traces of darkness behind the Romanticism of it.
She Walks In Beauty
She walks in Beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
...

Hi,
I really need help for my paper on Byron:
Do a close reading of a few stanzas from Childe Haroldís
Pilgrimage and then relate them to the larger
context of the canto in which they appear.
I am planning to do Canto third. Could anyone please tell me what canto third is about?? and which stanza is easy to interpret??
I would like to relate it to the theme of Byronic hero for some stanzas, could anyone please tell me which other stanzas there are
I have:
VI
'Tis to create, and in creating live
A being more intense, that we endow
With form our fancy, gaining as we give
The life we image, even as I do now.
What am I? Nothing: but not so art thou, 50
Soul of m...

17 may 1824 two bound volumes of Byrons memoirs
were fed to the flames by John Murray... Byrons publisher
He considered them too scandalous to publish
It was a huge act of literary vandalism...
Who knows what gems of information and gossip were
contained in those writings.... alas we ll never know !...